I went on a trip to Phoenix and managed to see a lot of other things along the way and even took a few pictures
Not really part of the trip, but I went and got my rental car for the trip. It was another GM junker; this time it began overheating before I even got it home. It had less than 3000 miles on it and was already worthless. This, after it took an unconscionable amount of time to pick it up. There were two people ahead of me in line and they both took about 15 minutes apiece to resolve some issue or other with their reservation (the latter was a bunch of foreign tourists who brought enough luggage to move here in; they refused to rent a larger SUV after spending all that time arguing with the rental agent).
Anyhow, I limped home, pulling off the road to let the GMJ cool off; I did not want to spend two hours somewhere in town waiting for roadside service! I had to pack after all. Tow truck arrived and swapped cars for a Dodge Avenger, which actually ran.
Unfortunately it also had the retarded "keyless" entry that gives me so much grief. The only way to avoid a false alarm with this car was to lock each door manually (by pushing down on the knob); and of course since the car unlocks all of the doors when you get out, you have to lock them all. Someone please explain why it makes sense to even put a keyhole in the door if you are going to make it virtually impossible to use it without blowing your ears off? And if it's somehow more secure, why put the key and the transmitter on the same device? If you've stolen a key and are using it to get into the car, you've also stolen the transmitter for the keyless entry, YOU F***ING DUFUS!
I want to beat the s***heads who came up with these things senseless.
Left work (in Colorado Springs) at about 1:30 and headed south to Walsenburg. Then I left the interstate, taking US-160 over La Veta Pass (in a snowstorm) into the San Luis Valley (about which more later), which is the upper part of the Rio Grande river valley. It's flat as a plate, about 7200 feet above sea level, and 40 miles or so across. The largest town in the valley, Alamosa, is nowhere near even so much as a hill, yet is considered a "mountain town", simply because there are mountains all around it even if they are 20 miles or more away. It regularly dips to 25 below zero in the winter here; a cold air mass will move into the valley and then has no way out.
Below is a picture I actually took a few days later; it's a three-D model of the San Luis Valley, looking north. The higher mountain in the lower right is Blanca Peak.
I then left the San Luis Valley via Wolf Creek Pass, again in a snowstorm. Why, oh WHY did I take two of the most notorious passes on a day it happened to be snowing in the San Luis Valley? Where is that "dumbass club" thread?
Stopped for the night in Durango, which I am sure is a name that has made it into Westerns or country & western music but is definitely famous now for having an SUV named after it. In other words, I had driven all afternoon and well into the evening and I was still in Colorado. And Colorado isn't even a particularly large Western state (but iron it flat and it will cover Texas four times over). Note to easterners: It's big out here.
Out of Durango and into Four Corners. I reached Four Corners at 7 AM and discovered that it is possible to close a dot on the map. You have to drive through a gate to reach it and it was closed. Not willing to wait until 8 AM, I continued, crossing into the Navajo Reservation. Actually the Rez (as I understand they call it) covers parts of New Mexico and Utah; as soon as you leave Colorado you are on the Rez. Southwest Colorado is also a reservation, this time for the Ute.
BTW if you drive past four corners you spend about one mile or even less in New Mexico; they had to swing the road past it either to the north or the south, and they chose to go south. But it's short enough you could actually hold your breath between Colorado and Arizona.
For whatever reason the Navajo (who call themselves the Diné, pronounced dih-NEH) seem to have been less devastated by the events of the last few centuries than have other "Indian" tribes; the language is still spoken by a fairly large number of people. The only other tribe I am aware of that has done this well (or rather, only done this poorly) is the Sioux (Lakota, Nakota and Dakota). Perhaps it has something to do with this land actually being the sort of land they had lived on before; it seems now they mostly ranch, having substituted the pickup truck for the horse.
The ancestors of the Diné apparently came over from Asia about 6000 years ago in the second migration. Other tribes from the second migration ended up in Western Canada and the Alaskan interior. (The first migration, 12000 BC, is pretty much all of the other "Indian" tribes; the third migration is the Inuit and Aleut about 2-4000 years ago; the fourth migration is the Europeans.)
Anyhow, I reached the end of US 160 just west of Tuba City, then turned south to Flagstaff. At this point one is very near the Grand Canyon, but the most obvious feature is Mt. Humphrey, an isolated peak that happens to be the highest in Arizona. I remember vividly flying around this mountain in my Cessna back when I could fly; I was struggling to climb when the wind was blowing down the slopes of this mountain.
Rather than turn south to Flagstaff, I turned east on I-40 for about 25-30 miles and exited; driving south six miles. Here is the best-preserved meteor crater on earth.
Fifty thousand years ago, a 150 foot wide iron-nickel meteorite slammed into the earth here. It instantly dug a hole 4000 feet across and 500 feet deep. The meteorite itself was almost totally vaporized (think about that--150 foot wide chunk of solid iron, not just melted but boiled, instantly. That's 5.3 million cubic feet if I remember my math right, and (back of the envelope) 1.3 million (US) tons of iron. Vaporized.
I took copious pictures none of which actually saved onto the camera card. But first I took two pictures without the camera card, before I realized I had left the card out. Those two pictures, of a thousand pound surviving chunk of the meteor (I said "almost totally vaporized") I have; the ones of the crater apparently never made it.
Iron nickel meteorites are responsible for both the Sudbury and South African nickel deposits, both of which, when refined, also yield platinum and similar metals as a byproduct.
The following pictures are from Wikipedia, just so you'll have an idea what it looks like.
I mentioned earlier flying around Mt. Humphreys in my piloting days; I also did see this crater from the air (albeit from quite a distance) on that same trip. Never again though. (To quote Gardenfish: Stupid disease!)
I took care of a couple of things in Phoenix, then drove to Arizona State University in Tempe to see Dr. Richard Dawkins speak. Richard Dawkins is most well known at the present time as the author of The God Delusion.
The auditorium held something like 3000 people and only a handful of the seats were empty. To my astonishment none of the questions during Q&A were really hostile. (I have alas known too many religious nutters in amongst the much larger number of calmer, more reality bound churchgoers, to have expected better. In fact I am surprised no one was there protesting or trying to evangelize the people waiting in line.) The talk itself was very entertaining and included material that was not in The God Delusion, including pictures of the dozen or so books that claim to refute TGD. ("Claim" being the key word!)
Here is Dr. Richard Dawkin's website. Go take a look.
Back to Phoenix, where I stayed at a hotel just west of the airport. Airplane noise, which wasn't bad, and train noise, which was bad but infrequent (twice during my stay, and much better indoors). I can hear the horn in both ears, in fact my bad ear picks it up very well thanks to Mr. Recruitment, but the planes are pretty much gone if I sleep on my right side.
ToniG (a/k/a GoGreen and OceanBreeze) lives southeast of Tucson, basically near the edge of the United States. Her husband, Jim, is stationed at Fort Huachuca. (It sounds a bit like a sneeze, doesn't it?)
Time to bop down to Tucson. 105 miles, which ought to have gone pretty quickly at Arizona's posted speed limit of 75MPH. Alas there was traffic, a traffic jam (at 10:30AM?) and multiple construction zones, but since I gave myself an extra half hour I was only five minutes late for a noon lunch. Spent a couple of hours talking, had a good time. The restaurant turned out to be part of a huge RV dealership that I had trouble finding my way out of as I left (they placed roadcones in such a way as to suggest you needed to turn into a large dead-end lot). ToniG picked up the tab (thanks again!), and gave me an "It's a Dry Heat" refrigerator magnet. I think she's looking forward to moving to a more humid climate.
Left Phoenix about 2:30 PM. Normally I would have made this trip in a day but getting an early afternoon start meant I did not even reach Alamosa until about 11PM. Also, crossing into the Rez meant crossing from Arizona time (they stay on Standard Time) to Mountain Daylight time, which had started just that morning at 2AM. I decided to call it quits for the night in Alamosa; I figured I could spend some time at Great Sand Dunes National Park the next day.
And by the way, this time the weather was fine.
And also by the way, I reached the Four Corners area after dark, so still no picture of that. Maybe next time--whenever that turns out to be.
If you look again at this picture:
...you will see over on the right side a beige lump. That is the Great Sand Dunes. Some are over 750 feet tall, though you will not see those without a bit of a hike.
Here is the classic view from the road leading into the park:
And a closeup
You will note the mountains in the background; those are the Sangre de Christos mountains that form the eastern boundary of the San Luis Valley. The ground below the dunes is very typical San Luis Valley--almost a complete desert, high altitude, drought tolerant grass--and flatter than Kansastan.
(It was in the visitor's center that I took the picture of the model of the San Luis Valley.)
You can drive to another area and actually get out and walk--across a quarter mile of flat sand, which is tiring to walk across just in and of itself, to the dunes; you are even allowed to climb to the top.
But it's not exactly easy or quick. You are walking up a sand hill; every step upward is actually half a step back as your feet sink into the sand. I eventually figured out that sometimes if you took really short steps your feet wouldn't sink in too badly; there was even one slope where my footprints looked normal. Nevertheless, I only made it about a quarter of the way. I simply didn't have time, or I could have taken it slowly and gained the summit, which was about 650 feet up. (The 750 footer, named Star Dune, is further in; probably visible from the top of the 650 footer, High Dune.
The arrow marks how far I got, the green circles shows a few people who were on their way down.
One side of every dune is always very steep, probably something like 40 degrees or more in slope. This picture doesn't show it well but it's a pit worthy of the one at the beginning of Return of the Jedi.
Once I got back to the parking lot, a bit of a surprise. This fellow was rather colorful. Apparently this is a magpie, but I never knew they had blue on the body and green on the tail.
"Magpie" because here's what it looks like flying:
This bird is used to being fed, by the way. After it flew off I tossed a crumb of food out of the car (yes I eat while driving on these trips) and before I knew it there he was! (Feed me!)
I left the Sand Dunes National Park heading west. That would take me to Colorado 17, which runs slightly west-of-north, to the north exit from the San Luis Valley: Poncha Pass.
You aren't hallucinating, and neither was I. An alligator farm, in Colorado, a thousand miles from the ocean, 7500 feet above sea level, in this climate?
This I had to see!!!
Apparently this place rescues all sorts of critters and they raise fish here too like tilapia. It turns out there is a hot spring here, and that's how they keep the alligators from freezing.
...and crocodiles (no picture of that one; it was inside a hothouse and my camera lens fogged up). Also gigantic pythons and boas--and when I say gigantic I mean bigger than the python my brother used to own, which came in at 11 feet. (The typical 6 foot "big boa constrictor" pet looks tiny to me.)
...and turtles. Red eared sliders like they used to sell for 39 cents at pet stores; only these are something like 8 inches length, maybe more, if my eyeball is any good.
,,,and tortoises. I think this is a Galapagos tortoise.
...and peacocks
...and ostriches
...and emus
...and rheas
...and even these guys. (The Aussies just might recognize 'em!)
Got to Pagosa Springs and turned east toward Pueblo, then at Cañon City turned north to Colorado Springs and home. Cañon City, by the way, is the home of the Royal Gorge bridge, the highest bridge on the planet and the only one that wasn't built primarily to take people or their stuff from point A to point B. It's a pure tourist attraction, rather expensive, and if willing to pay the prices, possibly good for people to go to during a gathering.